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GLA
"You enjoyed seeing my heart suffering. Suffering caused by your cruelty and empty days. You listened to my cries as if they were music. While I was burning in the fire of their echo." :- "Lissa Faker" ("Do You Still Remember?") by Oum Koulthoum The Global Liberation Army, or GLA, is a minor faction in Red Alert 3 Paradox. They will be encountered in several campaign missions, and may be present on some skirmish missions as neutral vehicles, or even a hostile force. They are based on their counterparts in "Command and Conquer: Generals". Background The Fanatics There are many organisations in the world not happy with the way the Allies and Soviets have divided up the world into supporters and enemies. These organisations reject both the dogma of communism and the secularism of the Allies for their own path, and one of the largest of these organisations is the Global Liberation Army. Hailing primarily from the Middle East, they preach a strict (if flawed) interpretation of the Qur'an and take violent action against all they see as aggressors. They virtually control much of the region, including Saudi Arabia and much of Palestine, and have been engaged in running battles with Allied, Iranian Communist, Syndicate, and Talon forces for several years now. The Road Paved With Good Intentions The earliest origins of the GLA started with various nationalist movements in the Middle East, such as Al-Fatat or various rebel forces that fought against the British and French rulers in regions such as Iraq and Syria. Many of these fighters held to the idea of Pan-Arabism, a single unified Arab state that would throw away the artificial "nations" created by Western colonial powers and create a new Arab nation from the ashes. Though often unsuccessful, these movements cost the colonial powers in men and money, earning the Arab movements greater rights and freedoms in their own individual nations. It also earned fierce crackdowns, and many times Arabs who were content with their lives soon found new work to be done in fighting alongside their countrymen. Filth and Corruption While at first led by intellectuals educated if Western school and holding to ideas like personal freedoms and a new national pride, the long march of time combined with both internal power struggles and external threats meant that the Pan-Arab movement fractured. Some became intensely bitter about British control in Palestine. French authorities struggled to contain Syrian fighters, with one of the biggest blows coming in the form of the death of King Ghazi of Iraq, a staunch militarist with an intense passion for Arab nationalism against Western powers. Though a man who often wanted to militarily annex Kuwait, other Arab nationalists from the country preferred him to the British-backed al-Sabah family. His death via car crash in 1939 decimated his movement, though many military officers believed his death the result of British agents. This claim was reinforced time and again, as many Pan-Arab leaders were often killed or died under unexpected circumstances. By the Second World War, Pan-Arabism had been broken into multiple nationalist fronts, though a strong core of believers in the original Pan-Arab movement attempted to carry the ideals forward. Route Canal The biggest blessing to Arab nationalism as a movement came in 1952, when Egypt started a revolution against the ruling monarchy led by officers in the British-trained Egyptian military. One of the chief leaders of this movement was Gamal Abdel Nasser, who with many others saw the war with the Soviets as the best chance to finally seize Arab self-rule. After a short revolution, the Egyptian military deposed the king, and in the place of the monarchy came the Republic of Egypt, with Nasser's force of personality setting him up as the premier ruler of the new nation. Though many debate his actual political skill, the Egyptian people consider him a national hero, lionized for his nationalization of the Suez Canal Company despite the efforts of the British in 1956. Already worn from the war, the British and French could only send token forces to try and force the Egyptians to retake the canal, their impotence stirring greater Arab pride and efforts. Unfortunately, Nasser was a man who made enemies, one of the greatest being the Muslim Brotherhood, religious fundamentalists that wanted a new Islamic government instead of a leftist-leaning nationalist government. Nasser's death in 1964 from a heart attack loosened the floodgates of a new threat. From a Cloudless Sky For some time before the Third World War, the Arab nationalist movement was slowly being subsumed by a more radical group. Hardline religious extremists found new power in the rapidly changing world, siphoning support away from the Pan-Arab movements by calling with a more common cry of a religious paradise, promising the poor and destitute a world without foreign powers. It is a cry not based on equality of men and a new political life, but one based on the expulsion of all that is different dressed up to beguile the listener into believing they are fighting for a just cause. Often, the GLA recruits and enlists from the most poorly educated and desperate sections of society, young men and boys who have nothing but anger, and see ever greater Allied and Soviet encroachments as the most obvious changes in their world. Normally these men would pose as much of a threat to any world power as a .22 to an Apocalypse, but two factors have helped their survival. First, these crazed fighters for the GLA are not professional soldiers. They will often undertake strategies and plans that many sane commanders would balk at and refuse to even consider, a blind spot that has so far allowed the amateur GLA fighters to cause more trouble than many military commanders expected. The second is that many powerful people in the Arab world see the GLA as a valuable tool to use and discard. Oil sheiks, water rights owners, ruling families, all have uses for the GLA against the Allies and Soviets, and their own political enemies. Where the Arab nationalist movement sought to unite the Arabian Peninsula, more and more GLA leaders are trying to outmanoeuvre one another, various private companies, and some of the most powerful entities in the geopolitical spectrum. Our Homes are in Peril Currently, the largest battlegrounds of the GLA's "war of freedom" are the Arabian Peninsula, Palestine, and Afghanistan. In Saudi Arabia, the GLA cells are fighting against what many see as a forced homogenization into a "proper" democracy by the Allies, completely ignoring ancient beliefs and traditions held for hundreds of years, as well as trying to continue some trace of the Arab Nationalist movement by keeping the oil fields in the hands of those that could actually benefit from them. In Palestine, the GLA claims to be fighting a force of men using weapons of brass and clockwork, but most dismiss these reports as heavily exaggerated, or the result of the average undereducated GLA fighter mistaking advanced machinery for such construction. Finally, the mountains of Afghanistan are a constant battleground between GLA militia, Legion Security contractors, and bribed GLA warlords under the "indirect contract" of Legion Security. Despite these vast differences, the GLA as a whole fight for their "war of freedom" with the same underestimated skill as a Soviet conscript, with the same zealous nature as a Confederate minuteman, and with the same security in their destiny as an Imperial warrior. Army "The obvious ones don't scare me anymore. The screamers, the runners, they don't scare me. Sight'em, freeze'em, goop'em, shoot'em if they get too close. No, the worst ones are the quiet ones. The ones who just blend in with the population. The ones who fire a shot and run. I can't look at a crowd of people anymore without thinking, ''"Maybe I should just freeze 'em all." And sometimes, I think that we should do worse than freezing."'' :- Peacekeeper Sgt. Earl MacCallister, in an off-the-record interview with the Associated Press. Units Structures White Guard Reinforcements These forces can be called upon during Minor Faction Deathmatch. The White Guard are professional soldiers, trained and equipped to capitalize on the untrained efforts of the common GLA fighter. Behind the Scenes * Based on everyone's favourite terrorists, the Global Liberation Army (GLA) from Generals. Category:MinorFactions